doing things that scare you, growth, and the tricky concept of bravery

The first time I heard the phrase "Fake it 'til you make it," I was 17 and giving my first speech in my high school speech class. Since my complete paralyzing fear of talking in front of my peers was obvious to anyone with eyes or ears, that was basically what my speech was about - that I was shaking and my face was a disturbingly tomato-like shade of red and I hated this and I never wanted to do this again ohmygodgoodbyeforeverhyperventilate.

When I was done, my friend (bless him) raised his hand, lied to my face, and said he couldn't tell I was nervous. "Fake it 'til you make it," my teacher said, and winked. I sat down, was baffled that I got an A on that speech, and promptly shook during every speech I gave after (and to this day).

But I tremble less now, and my face only turns pink instead of that-girl-is-going-to-explode-red. And that's only true because I've had to speak in public since then. A lot more than I'd like, and just enough to be starting to get used to it. And all those talks forced me to face the fact that public speaking isn't as bad as I built it up to be in my head. Yes, really.

I never would have described myself as brave. I still probably wouldn't now, but I learned when I was 17 that we shouldn't be so afraid of half of the things that scare us. That really we've just built them up in our heads as these unconquerable, terrifying things when they're probably not.

When I left for China, I was scared. I cried on the plane -- twice. When I first moved to DC, I think I trembled for approximately two weeks straight. Hell, I used to be completely neurotic and freaked out about talking to a guy I liked. That scene in Friends when Monica asked Chandler what's the worst that could happen if he asked a girl out and he replied, "I could die!" -- yeah, I've believed that.*

But I've done all of those things anyway, and as terrified as I was, I enjoyed them. Being forced into uncomfortable situations gave me two options: Freak out and give up, or do it anyway and get over it along the way. Fake it 'til I made it. And now that I've done them, they don't seem so scary. By extension, a whole lot of other things don't seem so scary -- things like going backpacking, continuing with grad school, moving abroad permanently.

I don't know if this makes me brave, but I know those things aren't unconquerable. Little is, really. And if this shy, quiet, still-turns-red-when-more-than-two-people-look-at-her-girl can conquer living in China, moving across the country, and asking out a cute guy, then maybe there's hope for everything else too.




*In case you've never watched that scene, here's a clip, which is hilarious:

In Which All The Panic Became Something Good

I don't know if you guys saw my tweets this morning, but they went something along these lines:

"It's really fun finding out that a fact you made a lot of decisions based around was wrong. #Not."

"My life has become one round of misinformed decisions after another."

"我不知道。(I don't know.)"

This is because (to make an excruciatingly long story short) I found out that learning Chinese has been a total waste of my time, career-wise, because international treaties (I want to study international law) are written in French. And while, yeah, they're translated into Chinese, that's really not the dominant language of international law and I really need to learn French to make it anywhere.

Uhm. Cool.

I panicked when I found that out. Mostly because I've wasted a year learning a really difficult language that I apparently don't need and now I'm too far into my major to switch to French. Also, I'm required to study abroad to graduate and I was already working on applications to go to China for eight months in January and yeah I DON'T WANT TO DO THAT IF I DON'T NEED TO.

I mean, don't get me wrong. Spending eight months abroad would be amazing. But... I'm very much a home-person. I need my family and my friends. I was terrified to go for that long alone. If Mr. Man could come, okay, maybe I could handle that, but 8 months without him or my family or my friends? No. NONONONONONONO.

Not if it's not worth my time, at least. And apparently, it's not.

And then there are all the other decisions I made based on the China-for-8-months-thing -- like signing a lease that only goes from May-Dec because I won't need a place Jan-Aug, but now suddenly realizing that HOLY CRAP I NEED A PLACE TO LIVE.

I talked to my mom on the phone for multiple hours about all this today. We've got it pretty much figured -- I'll keep the lease I have and just move into my own place in January instead of going to China. I'll still go to China in the summer for 10 weeks to fulfill my international requirement to graduate, but now that I'm not spending a whole semester there I'm actually going to graduate on time instead of a semester late like I was going to have to. Which is a HUGE relief.

And, and, here's the best part: Because I'm going to be here that semester, I don't *need* to take a lot of summer school like I was going to have to to make up for basically taking a hiatus (one of the issues about going abroad 8 months was I could only take 1 class while I was there, instead of 5 I would have in the US). But, if I do take 2 classes during the summer, just 2, then I can actually get my minor in psychology like I've been wanting to and STILL GRADUATE ON TIME! I love psychology and have been wanting to study it but was going to have to stay a whole 'nother semester to do so, putting me at graduating a full year late.

So, RECAP: this morning: I was a double major graduating in December 2012. Tonight, I go to sleep a double major with a minor in psych graduating in May 2012.

UDHR

In my International Politics and Law class, we've been studying international treaties/declarations a lot, including why they get created and why they are (or aren't) complied with, and this one really caught my attention. It's the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Signed by all members of the UN in the General Assembly, it calls for basic human rights that most of us (especially Americans and Western Europeans) enjoy daily and rarely have to question. Rights like the right to marriage (though, Americans do have to question how far that extends), or to vote, or to not be tortured or held in slavery, the right to be equal before the law and be treated as a human being no matter what. Again, things that we typically don't have to question, because at the top of society, we enjoy these rights every day.

And yet, there are billions of people that don't enjoy those rights -- they live in constant fear of being forced into slavery, of being "silenced" for their political/religious/sexual/whatever beliefs. The UN says that those actions are illegal and cannot be carried out by anyone, implying that especially their member countries should be abiding by this. And yet member countries like China and Iran, many African countries like Guinea, Burundi, Yemen, Sudan, and Rwanda, still make the news with mass genocides and rapes, and general human rights violations, even though they've agreed to this contract that "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood" (Article 1, UDHR), and that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person." (Article 3, UDHR), among 28 other explicitly listed rights.

So what the hell was the point of the declaration? If you go read it, it has absolutely no enforcement policy. The UN has basically said that yeah, everyone's equal, but we're just going to twiddle our thumbs about it and blah blah blah, "condemn" people who participate in violations, but basically not punish them at all. So things like this happen:

Bloody Monday: The September 28 Massacre and Rapes by Security Forces in Guinea. Yeah, you read that right -- Security Forces. As in Guinea's Elite Presidential Guard carried out the abuse of hundreds of people in a stadium.

Burundi refusing asylum to Rwandan refugees as they attempt to escape violence and oppression in their own country.

Skin on the Cable: Cambodia sending drug users to "rehabilitation camps" that seem a lot more like detention camps. The Human Rights Watch report talks about detainees being "beaten, raped, forced to donate blood, and subjected to painful physical punishments such as 'rolling like a barrel' and being chained while standing in the sun."

I know I've mentioned China before, but let's talk about them: Like Cambodia, they're also jailing drug users, censoring Google (which I'm sure we've all heard about), and keeping mum on the disappearances of 43 Uighur men after they were detained by Chinese security forces.

So, seriously, why did the UN bother to create this declaration? The countries that already lived by it still do and the countries that didn't live by it then still don't. If it wasn't going to get enforced, why bother? It just makes the UN look bad. Don't you agree? It doesn't look good for the UN that organizations like Human Rights Watch and International Justice Missions (not to mention the media in general) have to call them out to live by their own standards.

Thank God the UN is finally taking a step in the right direction and attempting to end rape in war, but a lot more needs to be done before they can say that they have truly universally declared and agreed to human rights.

Here's a good article defining exactly what human rights and their violations consist of.

(Thanks go to Human Rights Watch for all the articles I mentioned/linked up to. That organization rocks. Definitely check them out -- there are thousands more articles that I didn't get to mention.)

Freedom of the Press?

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the World Media Summit. It's basically an opportunity for people working in media to get together to discuss "ways of survival and development for the global media industry." (Li Congjun, President of Xinhua News Agency in Beijing.) The theme of the summit is "Cooperation, Action, Win-Win & Development."

It should probably be titled something more along the lines of "Someone Other Than Me Note the Irony in China Hosting a Global Media Summit to Further Media Influence and Power When They Barely Allow Foreign Reporters in Their Own Country Any Rights At All. I Feel Like I'm Taking Crazy Pills!"

I realize that's a long title. So I'm willing to settle with simply "Hypocrisy!" Hoo-ah!

Luckily, someone else agrees with me. See, there's this little group called Human Rights Watch (maybe you've heard of them?) and they've noted the irony in this too. As they say in that article, important people such as News Corporation Chairman & CEO Rupert Murdoch, AP President & CEO Thomas Curley, Reuters News Editor-in-Chief David Schlesinger and BBC Director-General Mark Thompson will all be in attendance. They think (and I agree) that these powerful men should probably use this opportunity to encourage China to stop it's media censorship and abuse of journalists and actually live by not only their April 2009 National Human Rights Action Plan that says they'd cease this behavior, but also their constitution, of which Article 35 says that freedom of the press is guaranteed.

Yet, foreign journalists have been pretty much kept out of Tibet since March of '08. This past May, Guangdong provincial government asked the press to limit negative coverage in "national interest." In August, security guards in Guangdong "attacked Guangzhou Daily reporter Liu Manyuan when he attempted to take photos at the scene," beating him for roughly ten minutes. Three Hong Kong journalists were covering ethnic violence in Urumqi when they were teargassed and beaten by anti-riot police just last month. Five other reporters were arrested the same day and the AP news crews equipment was confiscated. (Read more about specific incidents of ill-treatment of journalists in China here.)

Is hoping they'd hold to their own word really asking too much? I don't think so. I mean, they said did they'd do it first. But, as so many people often do, they've gone back on their word and someone needs to hold them to it. And who better than people who are gathering to further media power? And yet, here is their list of objectives for the summit, directly from their website:

• Media challenges & solutions in digital & multimedia age
• Traditional media via new emerging media
• Financial crisis & media response
• How traditional media to meet challenges of digital and internet technologies
• Global media merging
• Challenges & opportunities in digital & multi-media age
• Hi-tech's impact upon media development
• Shaping the future of news rooms & journalists

Some are somewhat rough translations from Chinese to English (again, from website), but I was hesitant to correct them in case it was considered "misquoting" or whatever. But, even through rough translations, they're obviously not planning on discussing China's oppression of it's journalists. I suppose it could be part of 'media challenges,' but I get the feeling that's not really what they have in mind.

I just hope it comes up somehow. These men can't be so ignorant to not notice the irony of this whole situation. It's their duty to stand up for their own who are suffering for simply doing their job.

In the news...

So, I've been really really bad at doing this newsworthy blogpost once a week like I said I would. I know, I'm sorry. But I'm trying, really! Anyways, here are some things that have happened in the past two weeks.

Erin Andrews, a female sports journalist, has been all over the news recently because someone decided to horribly invade her privacy and shoot a video of her alone in her hotel room. We can only assume what she was doing. As if female sports journalists didn't have enough issues with people doubting their credibility, they're being judged by their looks as well, which is pretty unfair. (Image cred: Chicago Sun Times & Google)

Chris Brown recently tried out an apology to the public in relation to his severe and cruel beating of then-girlfriend Rihanna. However, judging by how long it took him to apologize and his means of doing so (YouTube, man? Really?) it's doubtful whether or not his apology is actually sincere. I'll leave it to you to decide for sure. As for me, I think it sounds pretty scripted.

Internationally, three American hikers are being detained in Iran. Apparently they accidentally stumbled across the border and are now being charged with entering the country illegally. They had a fourth friend who stayed behind and is hopefully helping them and the US government get them safely out.

An 89-year-old survivor of three Nazi concentration camps was found strangled in his New York apartment last Thursday. On Saturday, an arrest was made in relation to the murder/robbery, but police are still searching for a man who was apparently the woman's accomplice.

The verdict for Aung San Suu Kyi, a Myanmar opposition leader on trial for subversion, was expected Friday but was delayed until August 11. She has been on house arrest since 1989 after she rose to fame as the face of democracy for Myanmar during the national uprising of August 8, 1988 (dubbed '8888'). She and her two housekeepers are now being charged with illegally allowing an American man to stay in her home. She's a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and if convicted could spent up to five years in prison.

China, which is often criticized for its (extremely) liberal use of the death penalty, is promising to (try to) reduce it's numbers of executions. "As it is impossible for the country to abolish capital punishment under current realities and social security conditions, it is an important effort to strictly control the application of the penalty by judicial organs," Zhang Jun, vice president of the Supreme People's Court, said. Of course, because the official paperwork basically says it's on a case-by-case basis and can be subjectively judged, this may just be a political stunt to look better, but nothing at all may change. Human rights groups estimate that somewhere between 1,700 and 5,000 people were executed in China last year for crimes as small as drug traffiking. I guess we'll see if that number drops at all in the next year.

As if Michael Phelps needed another record to boast about, he set the world record in the 200 m butterfly on Wednesday, shattering his own previous world record. Of course, this made up for the extremely shocking loss he experienced in the 200 m freestyle to German swimmer Paul Biedermann on Tuesday. Until then, he hadn't lost the 200 m freestyle event since 2004 in Athens. But I guess there's a first time for everything, huh, Michael? This has sparked what is being dubbed The Great Swimsuit Debate, which basically asks if new polyeurathane suits are acceptable to compete in since they create an obvious advantage for the wearer but are too expensive for every team to afford. We'll see if they get banned before the 2012 Olympics.

An 8-year-old girl in Phoenix was lured into a shed, pinned down, and sexually assaulted by four boys, all 14 or younger. The family was described as "ashamed of her" because the crime made the family look bad. As shocking as this is to Americans, people who know Liberian culture know this is typical. After 14 years of civil war in which rape was one of the tactics used by fighters, groups like Amnesty International have estimated that 60-70% of women in Liberia have been sexually assaulted. A government report in '06 said that have 1,600 women surveyed, 92% reported some kind of sexual assualt, including rape. In Liberian communities, rape victims are often ostracized because of the crime, so many keep it quiet, and it's not because they think rape is okay, but because it's considered part of everyday life. In 2005, after Liberia's first woman was elected president, rape was finally made a crime. President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf had this to say about the crime: "Those parents should know that things have changed in Liberia," she told CNN last week. "No longer do we tolerate this. This is not a question of shame on the family. It's a question of the assault of a young child, and that cannot be tolerated."